Why was Brook testing its mobile website content?

Over 60% of traffic to Brook’s website comes from young people on mobile devices – and there’s truckloads of content to help them once they get on the site.

In the run up to March 2015, Brook had poured sweat into areas it felt would make its content stronger:

Longer pages – key pages had doubled in length, with the aim of answering all questions a user may have. So, Brook wanted to make sure content was easy to scan and understand, while being SEO-friendly.

Finding a “service” – Brook refers to its clinics as “services” and wanted to make sure people could easily find their nearest ones.

Natalie has worked at Brook for 8 years, and many of her colleagues have stayed true to the cause for similar amounts of time. So they wanted a fresh perspective on the site content and design, from their target audience.

To get fresh eyes, they ran remote UX tests using young people in the UK, aged 18-29.

How did Brook use remote UX testing?

The Brook team watched people try to perform key tasks on its mobile site, while giving their thoughts on particular aspects. They tested:

Content discovery and usefulness – how easy was it for people to find the contraception section of the site, and how useful was the content to them once they did?

First impressions – what was the gut feeling people got from the visuals and structure of the site?

Navigation clarity – did people understand the meaning of certain terms used in the navigation bar, and the key section titles… especially the term “service”?

The team was amazed at the deep, content-enhancing insights revealed by even tasks as straight-forward as those they set.

This user is confused about what a "Service" means

Which improvements were achieved?

Thanks to the awesome power of remote UX testing, Brook sexual health charity gave its content a serious jolt of life – for humans AND Google.

• Increased organic traffic — 859,682 sessions between March 2015 and February 2016• Improved Google rankings — with the Find a Service page claiming the No.2 spot on their list of top 10 pages• New website template launched — to make the site design cleaner and content easier to find

As well as these major improvements, the team also made little tweaks that added up:

Adding cross-links between relevant sections so people can find useful content more easily

Launching changes to the Find a Service section of the site, based on feedback from users

Complementing the work being done by 60 MSc students from University College London (UCL) with user feedback

Users gave the Brook website a web usability score (WUS), so Natalie and her team got a tangible, quantitative sense of how young people felt about their site.

Find out — for free — what your audience needs you to improve.

The nearest service for this Scotland-based user is coming up as being 78.8 miles away

What does Natalie think about remote UX testing?

It’s just a really new way of getting feedback and we used one of the default templates on the platform to set up our tasks. You get people’s thought processes without having to sit right next to them – which probably makes them feel too uncomfortable to tell you what they’re really thinking. The remote side lets you see things more honestly.

Tips for enhancing your website content with remote UX testing

Run natural search tests to see the terms people use when looking for the type of content you create, and how they use that content once they find it

Use first impression tests on web pages to see if the value proposition of your content or website jumps right out at users

Use content discovery tests to see whether users can easily dig out relevant content and whether section titles make sense to them

Optimise email-campaign landing pages by running UX tests on them, so you don’t end up driving hordes of traffic to a poorly-converting, rubbish page

What does your audience think about your site or app?

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